Summary of project aims

The crucial actors of a global economy are multinational companies (MNC) which are on no account "footloose companies". To a considerable extent they are dependent on an efficient institutional environment.

Multinational networks as well as regional networks can facilitate the emergence and utilization of innovations: The internationalization of companies facilitates cross-border processes of learning while the regional embeddedness of companies supports the emergence of close, trust-based relationships between different companies and between scientific, political and economic institutions.

In the project "Regional Learning of Multinational Companies", the relationship between organizational, multinational and regional arenas of knowledge production and knowledge transfer will be examined taking the example of selected innovation projects in four French and four German subsidiaries of multinational enterprises. In order to analyze the interaction between organizational and regional arenas of knowledge creation, we will examine the regional economic and governance structures and regional cluster and network policies pursued in the home regions of these eight subsidiaries.

Complementary to these eight organizational and regional case studies, the quantitative distribution of regional and organizational capabilities in Europe will be examined. Through the evaluation of selected records (REGIO, ISI-production-innovation enquiry, CIS3) the case studies are to be put into a wider framework.

Hereby, the following hypotheses should be checked:

1. Regional bases of organizational capabilities
2. Organizational bases of regional capabilities
3. Political initiatives to facilitate regional learning processes
4. Concentration of regional and organizational capabilities in Europe

The project will be carried out by an international and interdisciplinary team (Bamberg University, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe, University of Passau and Ecole de Management Strasbourg).